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2 yr. ago

  • Instead of buying a ticket I just search the sidewalk for the winning ticket (that someone else lost) while I'm otherwise doing my normal activities. My odds are winning are nearly the same as someone who buys a ticket, so I can dream just as much - but I can spend the money on something else.

  • I was referring to the city engineers timing all the lights in a city. As a driver paying attention can help, but when you have several square miles of road network, with roads unequally spaced, different speed limits and all the other weird stuff they do in a real city it is not easy. It gets worse if you go from city to a metropolitan area.

    I have concluded we will never convince people of that enough to change behavior (they will answer the question correctly when asked, but drive the same) thus i'm supporting transit as much as possible.

  • I get tailgated all the time despite being in the right lane . Sometimes I can see that person hang up their phone, finally look and move over. (This was on a rural highway, I was doing 20 under the limit and over 15 minutes 3 other cars passed without issues, which accounts for a 5 cars going my direction in that time)

  • That won't help much. By the time anyone notices the roads are slowing down there are six times as many cars on it as it can safely handle. Driving skills will help on backroads, but that isn't where most people are driving. No amount of training can make heavy traffic safe.

  • Engines have been in mass development for 100 years or so. We have learned a lot about making them reliable. They have a lot of parts, but they rarely break. Most problems on modern ICE cars is not related to the engine or transmission (oil changes are not a problem) and so you end up with most breakdowns in an EV being things common to an ICE, plus the EV specifc stuff that we haven't figured out yet.

    At least for the first 300k.miles or so. Then the ICE wears out.

  • There is always need for a master mechanic to figure out the hard / weird stuff. But for every one of them you need 6 parts replacers to read codes.

  • A lot of people live in cities and make far less than 150k, even when you add both parents income. They do just fine. Housing where you live might be expensive ,but there are more affordable houses around. Probably not in areas you would be willing to live.

  • No, PRIVATE transit. I don't support the government building roads - that is meddling in the natural state of things and makes private industry unable to compete. If you must have socialist roads than you must have socialist transit as well, but I reject that.

  • In the real world when you see .9 you often should round it. You rarely have as much precision as presenting - .5 should generally be seen as 1 unless you have reason to believe the measurement is that precise.

  • Adam Smith observed in his epic that when people get more money they generally spend it on more/better housing. Today we have a few more luxury goods, to add to a house, but a house is still something people spend more and more money on when they get it.

    I'm not sure that is bad. My dad died at 65 - what was the point of all the retirement savings he had saved up (at least my mom can enjoy it). Even if you live for much longer, most old people I know have failing bodies and so they can't really enjoy those old years. More and more my advice to people is save for a rainy day and an okay retirement, but don't save for a rich retirement - instead enjoy that difference now.

  • Sadly it works out for them overall. It only takes a few times of getting to the next light as it turns yellow and they are way ahead while you are sitting there at a red light. Sure sometimes you get to see them when it doesn't work out, but when it works out they are long gone.

    Timing traffic lights is a hard problem.

  • Sure, but I'm the guy doing the speed limit in the right lane.

  • It would, but worse. Both are a case of more cars than there is space. Heavy congestion would just need a lot more lanes to fix - maybe 10x as many. (don't ask me to pay for that or where those lanes go)

    Or in short, support better transit for your city. For that cost of miles of 15 lane highways you can put in a lot of transit.

  • Different bases would have different things they cannot represent as a decimal, but no matter what base you can find something that isn't there.

    For real world use base 12 is much nicer than base 10. However it isn't perfect. Circles are 360 degrees because base 360 is even nicer yet, but probably too hard to teach multiplication tables.

  • They are underground, just not under the road. They are in grass which is easier to dig up.

  • There are multiple different rules in many locales. Here are the rule for MN (as of 20 years ago) The DNR has a season on them, so you have to have a small game license (no license needed if under 16), hunt in season, obey the maximum per day limits, and eat it after you kill it. The health department considers them rodents and will sometimes issue permits to kill them year round in specific areas, you don't need to eat them. Agriculture law allows you to kill any non-endangered species that is a pest (this is what allows you to kill mice as well).

    Remember the above is MN law as of 20 years ago when I last checked. Such law changes from time to time and place to place.

  • VW requires their mechanics get the least amount of training of any manufacture. I had a VW (pre scandal diesel) and it was very reliable - but only because I did all the work myself. When I took it in I had problems.

  • That isn't perfectly safe. That is normally safe, but once in a while something will go wrong and they become unsafe.

  • My town is putting pipes next to the road instead of under it. That way they can work on pipes without tearing out the road, and when working on the road they don't have to worry about the pipes (as much - I assume they still have to run under)